Flashback to Summer - Bonnaroo 2009 Part I

I've been wanting to write about my experience at the Bonaroo Music and Arts Festival for a while now, and I figure this blog is a good venue. Keep in mind that I went to the festival back in June, and I was sleep deprived and under the influence of...well, one thing or another for virtually the entire weekend, so this may not be super accurate. Thankfully, my friend and co-Rooer Jeff also did a writeup much sooner than I did (weeks after rather than months after), so I have that to refer to, as well as the captions from the album on Facebook.

So, to start at the beginning. Way back in the summer of '08, I heard about Bonnaroo in passing because one of my WoW buddies, Max, was going and had been several times before. At the time, I didn't think much of it, although reading about it on the website it did sound cool. Fast forward to late January of '09. I had looked at the Bonnaroo site on a whim, and got it in my head that it might be a really fun time to go. A little later, I found out that Nine Inch Nails was playing the festival. Now, for those of you who don't know, I *love* NIN. I don't necessarily listen to them super often (particularly not these days), but NIN (along with a couple of other industrial acts - Assemblage 23, Orgy, Covenant and a few others) were a HUGE part of my last two years of high school. My junior year in particular I listened to little else...and in those days, I quite literally wore headphones ALL the time. There's actually a number of family pictures of me from those days in which I have a pair of headphones around my neck. I went through 3 portable CD players and two MP3 players in 4 years of high school...they took a lot of abuse, simply by virtue of being run and carried virtually ALL the time.
So anyway, the chance to see NIN for a second time (I also caught them here in Portland during the With Teeth supporting tour) was huge for me. And the more I looked at the setlist, the more I liked it - there was a chance to see the Beastie Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Oakenfold, TV On the Radio, and a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't heard of (funny story, the only bands from that list I actually saw were NIN and TV on the Radio). So while I was bored at work one day, I started looking into what it would take to go...at that point, it didn't look good. Bonnaroo tickets don't come cheap (just a hair under $300) and plane tickets to TN were at least $400. I put the idea on the back burner, thinking that perhaps if I came into some money I could make it work, but otherwise I would probably have to shelve it.
A couple of days later, I was doing one of my usual raids and happened to start talking about Bonnaroo with Max at which point I mentioned in passing (ok, semi in passing) that I was hoping to go but didn't think I could afford it with the cost of transport. He was nice enough to offer me a ride down. After thinking for maybe an hour, I went "Waitaminute, you have a chance to go to THE music festival, and you're wishy-washying it? DO IT DUDE!). Ok, I can take a hint from myself. I bought a ticket.

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

Ahh, Cut Copy...one of my all-time favorite acts, and one of the few bands I plan to write about that I've made it to see live...which gave me a ton more respect for them. At their very worst, they sounded as good as the album, and in general much better. That is an impressive feat for an electronic act, as so often there is so much done in post-production that it's hard for it to all come together on stage.

Anyway, onward. Nuts and bolts - Cut Copy is an electropop/synthpop act out of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. In Ghost Colours is their second (and best, in my opinion) album. I first heard about both the album and the band through a newspost on Jeph Jacques' excellent webcomic Questionable Content. Actually, I have heard about quite a bit of music through QC newsposts.

In Ghost Colours is a glorious example of the best of today's electronic music. I've been listening to it since it first came out, and I'm still not tired of it. It manages to be electropop without being depressing (which is why I classify it as both electropop and synthpop - oftentimes the line between the two is whether or not the music is dystopic or sad, but synthpop also conjures up images of bands like Freezepop, which this most decidedly is not).  Listening to the album as a whole feels like a glorious journey through a river of rainbows and snowflakes. It's mixed as gapless on the CD, and it's really worth listening to it that way, or at least as close as you can. While the singles are great (and I'll provide some video links later), the album really shines when it's listened to as a whole (which is why I'm not highlighting individual songs).


It starts out slowly (but strongly) and really goes through a whole story. Even after a year, I don't feel like I understand the album well enough to explain it, but it's amazing. If you have any love whatsoever for electronic music, you owe it to yourself to check them out.


Video links:
Hearts on Fire - Offical video here, the first single from the album. Like I said above, my love for this album really comes from the way it works as a whole, but if there were any one song that I really love on it's own, this is it. The video is great as well...I think we all have days like this sometimes.


Lights and Music - Again, official video. First single from the album. This also stands alone pretty well when it needs to, and I feel like it's a pretty good microcosm of both the album and of the band in general.


-A

What's Next For This Blog

So as you can see, I changed the name and the URL to reflect my new ideas for this blog. My plan is to start writing about music. Here's how that came about: Tonight (well, now yesterday) I made my weekly pilgrimage to Bull Moose to browse around and spend lots of money on CDs. While I was there, I found myself looking though the $2 VHS bin, with a vague notion of "hey, there might be an entertainingly bad movie here and I could watch it and...wait no, shit, I already know somebody who does that (and does it very well by the way, check out her blog here)". But the idea of blogging about SOMETHING stuck with me...earlier this week I stumbled across another friend's blog (here if you are curious) and had to log into my blogger account to post a comment, which reminded me that "oh hey you started a blog too a while back".

Anyway, I was in the car, unwrapping my purchases (very successful run, btw: Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke, New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too and the movie "Across the Universe" out of the discount bin) and it hit me - I could have some things to say about music. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense...over the last several months, music has become a lot more important to me, and I've started listening to a much bigger variety of different stuff (Bonnaroo helped with that). I was having a conversation about Vitalic with another friend a couple of days ago, where I referred to them as "more abstract than the music I typically listen to". Huh...kind of a clue that I might be descending into the early stages of music nerdery (in the "wow, what an indie nerd" sense, not the "wow, he can play lots of instruments" sense, though I would not call myself an indie nerd either).

Anyway, there is a lot of music that I have been listening to lately that I have stuff to say about, so I figure I'll say it here. If nothing else, it will be interesting to me. I have several albums in mind that I want to talk about at some point:
Oracular Spectacular by MGMT (Time to Pretend in particular is an important song for me)
Ocean Eyes and Maybe I'm Dreaming by Owl City (and Owl City in general to some extent)
Alive 2007 by Daft Punk
Before the Dawn Heals Us and Saturdays=Youth by M83
In Ghost Colours and Bright Like Neon Love by Cut Copy
Dystopia by Midnight Juggernauts
21st Century Breakdown by Green Day (yes, really)
Shout, the Very Best of Tears for Fears by (guess who!) Tears for Fears
Phoenix by Asia
and probably a lot of other stuff, I may regret giving myself even a list that big. I reserve the right to...well, do whatever I want. There is totally music out there that I would like to talk about but not cover the whole album, or whatever else. I'll probably do the odd non-music post too.

Anyway, that's the new hotness. Hope ya'll like the idea...
-A

Whoops, there's a blog here. Lulz. Heading up to Topsham in a second here to replace a thin client...while I like my job a lot, my least favorite part of it is the "oh shit hardware problem, I have to go on site". Oh well, at least it's a nice day for a drive...